[Footnote 18: Among the works deserving of a wider circulation is Thomas Stanley's "History of Philosophy." It well repays perusal, compiled as it was by an enthusiastic student of ancient thought, from reliable sources, and embodying, in an attractive style, "the Lives, Opinions, Actions, and Discourses of the Philosophers of every Sect, illustrated with Portraits of many of them. Third edition. Folio, pp. 750. London, 1701." The preceding notes are mostly extracted from this history.] Of the great minds of antiquity, Plato stands preeminent in breadth and beauty of speculation. His books are the most suggestive, sensible, the friendliest, and, one may say, most modern of books. And it almost atones for any poverty of thought in our time, this admission to a mind thus opulent in the grandeur and graces of intelligence, giving one a sense of his debt to genius and letters. His works are a cosmos, as Pythagoras named the world. And one rises from their perusal as if returned from a circumnavigation of the globe of knowledge, human and divine. So capacious was his genius, so comprehensive, so inclusive, so subtile, and so versatile, withal, that he readily absorbed the learning of his time, moulding this into a body of beauty and harmony compact; working out, with the skill and completeness of a creator, the perfect whole we see. His erudition was commensurate with his genius, and he the sole master of his tools; since in him we have an example, as successful as it was daring, of an endeavor to animate and give individuality to his age in the persons whose ideas gave birth to the age itself. And fortunate it was for him, as for his readers, that he had before him a living illustration of his time in the person of the chief character in his dialogues, Socrates himself. Of these dialogues, the "Republic" is the most celebrated, embodying his ripest knowledge. It fables a city planted in the divine ideas of truth and justice as these are symbolized in human forms and natural things. And one reads with emotions of surprise at finding so much of sense and wisdom embodied in a form so fair, and of such wide application, as if it were suited to all peoples and times. Where in philosophic literature is found a structure of thought so firmly fixed on natural foundations, and placing beyond cavil or question the supremacy of mind over matter, portraying so vividly the passage of ideas through the world, and thus delivering down a divine order of society to mankind?[19] [Footnote 19: If his "Republic" and "Laws" hardly justify him against those who accused him of having written a form of government which he could persuade none to practise, it may be said, in his favor, that he gave laws to the Syracusians and Cretans, refusing the like to the Ayreneans and Thebans, saying, "It was difficult to prescribe laws to men in prosperity."]